


three ring circus (is better than two)

by shrill_fangirl_screaming



Category: The Posterchildren - Kitty Burroughs
Genre: 3rd person limited Ernest POV, Getting Together, Other, fluffy as all hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 01:13:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9633470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrill_fangirl_screaming/pseuds/shrill_fangirl_screaming
Summary: Ernest notices Maks has been a little down lately, and confronts him about it.Things progress from there.





	

Ernest, while a friendly guy, didn’t have that many friends. He had Mal and Roz, who he knew like the back of his hand. He had June, but June was _June_. And he had Maks. That was his group. Those were his people. There were plenty of people he liked- people like Zip and Jack, who were wonderful additions to the Super Magnificent Seven, but they weren’t Ernest’s friends. Not yet. They were working on it, but Zip was really Mal’s friend, and Jack was really Roz’s. Ernest had Mal and Roz, kind of, and he had June and Maks. A narrow, well-defined group of people to care about.

So when one of them was acting strange, he picked up on it.

June had given Maks any number of peculiar, endearing nicknames. The sparkly Slinky. The bendy straw of her grudging affection. The glow noodle. The glittercritter. The pan peacock extraordinare. Maks wasn’t just a name anymore, it was an adjective, somewhere between “enthusiastic” and “effervescent” and “energetic”. It wasn’t hard to tell that Maks was somehow less _Maks_ than usual. Ernest liked Maks. He wanted the acrobat to be at what Maks would call his maks-imum potential.

The next time Ernest ran into Maks around campus, he caught him by the elbow. “Hey,” Ernest said, ducking his head a little so Maks wouldn’t have to strain to look at him, “Are you okay?”

“I’m way better than okay- have you seen my flips lately? They’re flipping genius, if I dare say so myself, and I do dare.” A cocky smile spread over Maks’s face, but it was wrong. Ernest couldn’t tell _why_ it was wrong, but it was wrong. The smile was a lie. “You’re scowling- are you okay?”

“You’re not okay,” Ernest said. “Something’s up. I think you’ve been ducking me and June, and I’m worried about you.”

Blue brightness sparkled in Maks’s eyes, over his cheekbones, on the tips of his ears. “I’m being a good wingman, leaving you and your lady to some alone time, if you catch my drift. Thought you two would be excited to spend some _quality time_ together.” Maks gave a theatrical, suggestive waggle of his eyebrows, but his smile was still wrong.

The thing was, Ernest had kind of thought he’d be happy to spend some alone time with June. He’d gotten in the habit of hanging out with June and Maks together, though, and both he and June had admitted it was weird hanging out without the sparkly wall of sound bouncing around the room. Kissing without an audience was nice, but Maks was so _bright_. “I appreciate that,” Ernest finally said, “But we miss you, and we think something’s wrong. Please, just tell me the truth. I can take it, I can fix whatever it is, I just… I don’t want to lose you. As a friend.”

For a long moment, Ernest could do nothing but watch the glow around Maks brighten and dim with his breaths. It was so pretty. Ernest wasn’t sure if boys were supposed to be pretty, but Maks was, Maks and his shimmer. “Do you really want to know?” Maks said, uncharacteristically serious.

“Yes,” Ernest said. “Whatever’s bugging you, I want to know. I care about you.”

Maks took one final deep breath, quit glowing, and said, “I’m a little in love with you.”

Oh.

Oh my.

“Oh wow,” Ernest said. “I- I kind of, I kind of thought, you know, June-“

“Her too, I’m definitely a little in love with her too,” Maks said. “It’s weird and I don’t want to make things weird and I’m glad you’re happy, I’m so glad both of you are happy, but I’ve been trying to-“

But honestly, Ernest wasn’t listening. His brain had unhelpfully brought to mind the moment Maks had kissed June in front of him, right after he’d gotten his costume. He hadn’t let himself analyze his reaction to it. He and Mal and Roz had been raised by public heroes, but him even more so than Mal and Roz, because his father wasn’t just _a_ public hero, he was _the_ public hero. Maks and June might tease him for being Foundation through and through, but he knew more than anyone what the world expected of its heroes. Maks kissing June had been immediately and firmly filed away in the box of “Things Li’l Champ Cannot Have”, and he hadn’t thought about it.

The moment played through again in his head- Maks’s glowing fingers on June’s chin, her flustered happiness, the smear of Marylin red of Maks’s lips. Ernest had liked it. It had felt right. He’d been happy, seeing the two people he cared about caring about each other. He had felt warm and anchored, like his father coming home from a mission.

Ernest felt like he’d opened a present to find something he hadn’t known he wanted, but now couldn’t live without.

“Come on,” Ernest said, wrapping a hand gently but firmly around Maks’s. “We’re talking to June.”

Glittering blue sparkles flipped off of Maks as Maks flipped and twisted to wrench himself out of Ernest’s grip- without success. “Whoa, no, no, no,” Maks said, “Now I get to go hide in the woods in shame and get over myself, this has always been the plan, do not take me to the lady of the flaming bees, I may not survive.”

“I’ll protect you,” Ernest said. “But we need to talk to June.”

Thankfully, he knew exactly where June was- the Wright house, her textbooks sprawled all over the table as she helped him eat through the carnage of stress baking induced by worrying over Maks. Maks was quiet during the walk, and it tugged uncomfortably on Ernest’s heart. Maks was supposed to be a constant source of sound. It reminded him of the Night Games attack.

“You found our wayward sparkle noodle!” June said delightedly when Ernest gently settled Maks on a chair. The acrobat immediately rearranged himself, balancing on his toes with his knees on his chest. June whacked Maks. “You made Ernest worry, you asshat.”

“Maks said something to me,” Ernest said, not quite sure how to phrase it but completely positive that Maks wouldn’t want to say it again. “Um, he uh, he said…” He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and looked his girlfriend in the eyes. “He said he had a crush on the both of us.”

Sparkles arced off Maks as he ducked his head, almost somersaulting off the chair. “If you leave that chair my bees will find you,” June said, one hand pressing firmly on Maks’s shoulder. “Stay.”

“I’m sorry.” It was muffled, because Maks’s face was still hidden in his legs. “I know, I’m trying to get over it, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to ruin everything but he was looking at me with the big dumb puppy-dog eyes, and-“

Ernest couldn’t lose both Maks and June. He couldn’t handle it. He was not equipped for that kind of loss. So with this, as with many things, he looked to June.

She met his eyes.

He blinked. Waited.

She smiled at him, and hope bloomed in his chest like someone was inflating a balloon, because June found Maks’s chin with a finger and tipped his face up towards hers and then she was kissing him again, and it was still so good and perfectly right.

When June pulled away, rubbing a bit of lipstick off Maks, Ernest gulped. Maks still looked scared, curled in on himself with his glow tamped down, but hope was in his eyes. “I’m down for a ménage a trois,” June said with a wicked grin. “And for all that you’re a monkey with a soul made of glitter and a spine designed by Escher, you’re _our_ monkey. I’m not going to get all _gooey_ on you, but I think he’s going to.” June jerked a thumb at Ernest.

He realized his mouth was hanging open a little, so he shut it. “Is this allowed?”

“Hell yeah,” June replied. “This is _totally_ allowed, there’s a word for it and everything.”

“Good,” Ernest said, and swept them both up in a hug. He wanted to kiss both of them, but mostly he just wanted them close, as close to him as possible. “Because I’m pretty sure I really, really like both of you.”

“Nobody better pinch me and wake me up.” Something shifted in the hug, and then Maks yelped. “Ouch! June, what did I _just_ say-“

“I told you I wasn’t getting all _gooey_ about this, I’ve done quite enough of that lately!” June and Maks pulled out of his hug, but it was okay. June lunged at Maks, fingers outstretched to presumably pinch him again, and Maks clambered onto Ernest’s shoulders to avoid the Ringleader’s wrath. “Oh, nice, hide behind the indestructible boy too kind for his own good, I see how this is going to be, I get it.”

Ernest wrapped his hands around Maks’s ankles absentmindedly, more focused on Maks’s fingers threading through his hair. “I’m just trying to avoid your terrifying, beautiful, pinchy fingers, I’ve always known you were a supervillain at heart, but alas, my attraction to the fatally beautiful-“

“You will not sweet-talk your way out of this!” June turned her attention to Ernest with a winning, seductive smile. “Ernest. Do you think you could maybe deposit our boyfriend on the ground, so that I might give him a well-deserved pinch? You know you have to train boyfriends early, or they learn bad habits.”

Maks’s face appeared upside-down in Ernest’s line of vision. “She called me your boyfriend. Her boyfriend. The boyfriend of you two.”

Ernest grinned. “I know.”

“This is why I’m not getting sappy, you two are more than enough of that for the three of us,” June said. “But seriously, Maksim, get your scrawny little carnie ass on the ground, you’re getting dirt literally everywhere. Someone has to hose down your hobbit feet before you stain every article of clothing Ernest owns. Would it kill you to wear shoes?”

Maks landed neatly on the ground, right in front of June. Ernest saw him arch an eyebrow before saying, “Jealous?”

“You get a single dirty footprint on my dress, and the bees will haunt you for the rest of your days. But you already knew that.” June smiled. “Didn’t you?”

Ernest saw both of them looking at each other with a challenge in their eyes, in his home, and relaxed completely for perhaps the first time in a month. This was what was supposed to happen. This was right.

He loved them both, too.

**Author's Note:**

> most/all nicknames applied to Maks came from kitty's tumblr quipquipquip, so i don't claim any credit of them there
> 
> also this is entirely unbeta'd and probably silly as all hell, but this fandom is so small but the books are so good and i ship ernest/june/maks so much and i needed M O R E, and my exact aesthetic is maks and june quipping at each other as ernest looks on like the fool in love he is
> 
> please please come find me on tumblr at i-am-having-an-emotion if you ship these fools, i am alone and dying


End file.
